PREFACE by Aylmer Maude

PREFACE

THIS volume is divided into seven parts.

First we have Tales for Children, published
about the year 1872, and reminding us of the time when Tolstoy was
absorbed in efforts to educate the peasant children. This section
of the book contains the two stories which of all that he has
written Tolstoy likes best. In What is Art? he claims no
place among examples of good art for any of his own productions
'except for the story God sees the Truth, but Waits, which
seeks a place in the first class (religious art), and A Prisoner
in the Caucasus, which belongs to the second (universal art).'
In the first of these the subject (a favourite one with Tolstoy) is
the forgiveness of injuries. The second deals with the simplest
feelings common to all men: fear and courage, pity, endurance,
&c.' expressed with that individuality, clearness, and
sincerity, which Tolstoy says are the signs of true art.

Part II contains a series of stories written for
the people; and among them What Men Live By, probably the
most widely circulated of all Tolstoy's tales. It is founded on the
oft-repeated legend of an angel sent by God to live for a while
among men.

Part III consists of a Fairy Tale, Iván the
Fool, which contains in popular form Tolstoy's indictment of
militarism and commercialism.

Part IV contains three short stories written to
help the sale of cheap reproductions of some good drawings; Tolstoy
having for many years been anxious by all means in his power to
further the circulation, at a cheap price, of good works of
pictorial as well as literary art.

In Part V we have a series of Russian Folk-Tales.
The gems of this collection are the temperance story, The Imp
and the Crust, the anti-war story, The Empty Drum, and
another story, How Much Land does a Man Need? which deals
with a peasant's greed for land. A Grain as big as a Hen's
Egg and The Godson are highly characteristic of the
spirit of the Russian peasantry, and supply a glimpse of the
sources from whence Tolstoy imbibed many of his own spiritual
sympathies and antipathies.

Part VI gives two adaptations from the French which
have appeared in no previous English edition of Tolstoy's works.
They are not merely translations, for to some extent Tolstoy when
translating them, modified them and made them his own.

Part VII consists of stories Tolstoy contributed in
aid of the Jews left destitute after the massacres and outrages in
Kishinéf and elsewhere in Russia in 1903, -- outrages which were
forerunners of the yet more terrible Jewish massacres of 1905.

The importance Tolstoy attributes to literature of
the kind contained in this volume, is shown by the following
passage in What is Art? --

'The artist of the future will understand
that to compose a fairy tale, a little song which will touch a
lullaby or a riddle which will entertain, a jest which will amuse,
or to draw a sketch such as will delight dozens of generations or
millions of children and adults, is incomparably more important and
more fruitful than to compose a novel, or a symphony, or paint a
picture, of the kind which diverts some members of the wealthy
classes for a short time and is then for ever forgotten. The region
of this art of the simplest feelings accessible to all is enormous,
and it is as yet almost untouched.'

The sections of the book have been arranged in
chronological order. The date when each story was published is
given. The translations are new ones, and for the footnotes I am
responsible.